Radio frequency (RF) receivers are used in a wide variety of applications such as television receivers, cellular telephones, pagers, global positioning system (GPS) receivers, cable modems, cordless phones, satellite radio receivers, and the like. As used herein, a “radio frequency” signal means an electrical signal conveying useful information and having a frequency from about 3 kilohertz (kHz) to hundreds of gigahertz (GHz), regardless of the medium through which such signal is conveyed. Thus an RF signal may be transmitted through air, free space, coaxial cable, fiber optic cable, etc. One common type of RF receiver is the so-called superheterodyne receiver. A superheterodyne receiver mixes the desired data-carrying signal with the output of tunable oscillator to produce an output at a fixed intermediate frequency (IF). The fixed IF signal can then be conveniently filtered and converted down to baseband for further processing. Thus a superheterodyne receiver requires two mixing steps.
Modern integrated circuit technology has allowed many of the circuits used in RF receivers to be combined on-chip and thus to substantially reduce the cost of the RF receiver. However this level of integration creates other problems. For example, signals from one part of the chip may be electrically or magnetically coupled to circuits in another part of the chip. These unwanted signal couplings can distort the desired signal and create artifacts that can be perceived by the viewer or listener. Traditionally, integrated circuit designers have used layout strategies to reduce coupling between circuits, such as physical separation, the addition of ground rings, a reduction in the length of conductors, etc. However these techniques, while still useful, are unable to completely eliminate the deleterious effects of electrically or magnetically coupled energy.
The use of the same reference symbols in different drawings indicates similar or identical items.